Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

8 o’clock

As this is the first opportunity I have had to speak since my re-election, I take this opportunity to thank the people of Longford-Westmeath for once again placing their trust in me in the most recent general election.

We are in this important debate speaking about what is possibly the biggest crisis facing this State. In my view, the housing crisis, particularly in the past couple of years, should have been declared a national emergency. However, for Government to have done that would have been for it to admit defeat and show an element of humility, something which it has failed to do time and again. This crisis was caused by many of the policies pursued by the outgoing Government. It is because of those policies that the outgoing Government lost 56 Deputies and is now unable to form a new Government. I call on the acting Government to listen attentively to the proposals being put before it by Members of all political parties and none.

Approximately 90% of the representations made to me at my constituency office in Longford-Westmeath on a daily basis relate to housing issues, including evictions of people from their homes because they cannot afford to pay their rent, repossession of houses by banks and young people who do not have the wherewithal to rent privately and are seeking social housing but cannot access it. These are problems facing us all. They are problems created by the outgoing Government through its policies during its five years in office, including the reduction in the social housing construction programme. It also slashed rent allowance, cut mortgage interest relief and left thousands of houses across every county and constituency void. It is unbelievable that there are still 3,000 voids across the country because the outgoing Government put a cap of €30,000 on refurbishment of a void while at the same time more than €200,000 is being spent on the construction of a modular home. That does not make economic or social sense. Probably the worst legacy of the outgoing Government is that tonight there are 1,800 children in emergency accommodation. The Government patted itself on the back for having enshrined the rights of our children in the Constitution, the referendum on which I vigorously supported. Surely the most basic right of any child is a place to call home. The Government has failed children and continues to fail them.

I welcomed the introduction of the mortgage to rent scheme. I believed it was an innovative scheme that would assist families who got into mortgage difficulties to remain in their homes. However, that scheme is not working and it needs to be amended. Where a family has lived 30 or 40 years in a house which a bank is seeking to repossess and that house has one or two bedrooms more than what is required for that family, the family does not qualify to remain in it. That does not make sense. Deputy Clare Daly referred earlier to the construction in her constituency of modular homes at a cost of over €200,000 despite that there are houses available for purchase on the open market for significantly less. Again, this does not make good economic sense.

For all the talk of this Government in terms of its prioritisation of this issue, two weeks ago a senior official in my constituency told me that despite that we are now into the second quarter of the year the council has yet to be advised of its allocation for this year. Where is the priority in terms of homelessness? How can the people charged with the responsibility make the necessary decisions if they are not even being given notice of how much they can spend on an annual basis? There are inconsistencies from county to county, with some county councils willing to help people with a deposit and others unwilling to do so, the former only in the case of people who are fortunate to find a house on the open market, which currently is not possible.

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